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Launch HN: StartPlaying.Games (YC W20) – Tabletop RPGs run by pro game masters

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Re: Launch HN: StartPlaying.Games (YC W20) – Tabletop RPGs run by pro game masters

#121

Post by YeGoblynQueenne »

soneca wrote: post #29

This is a great idea and just what I wanted! I have a question about which system is better for a story-driven game for beginners. Some context: I like RPG, but I have played exactly 4 times in the last 20 years. Last time I played it was D&D and my experience was it was more of a tactical game focused on combats than characters and story. It was about the squared map, knowing all the rules of your weapons and spells…

>> I would prefer to develop a story together. A system where you don’t need a exact map with squares/hexagons to make decisions, for example. Where story and character decisions on what to do matter more than tactical decisions in combats.

You're probably looking for something like the old Call of Cthulhu by Chaosium:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Call_of_Cthulhu_(role-playing_...

I see from the wikipedia article that the last edition was in 2014, so it's still going. There used to be a d20 version, also, for those people who don't know how to read two d10 side-by-side ;)

You might also want to check out the user forums at rpg.net:

https://forum.rpg.net/index.php

You can find threads for all sorts of games, more or less popular. You're bound to find something that you will like.

Re: Launch HN: StartPlaying.Games (YC W20) – Tabletop RPGs run by pro game masters

#122

Post by TaupeRanger »

j0ncc wrote: post #15

I tried this service and ran 2 campaigns with different groups of friends. It was amazing. DND was something I wanted to try for a long time but the barrier to entry was (at least, perceived to be) really high. Great to see this finally launching. I'll be recommending this service to anyone who's interested in dipping their toe into DND. I also love that you're making being a "Professional Dungeon Master" a plausible…

> ran 2 campaigns with different groups of friends

Wait what? Am I missing something? You made your friends pay to play with you?

Re: Launch HN: StartPlaying.Games (YC W20) – Tabletop RPGs run by pro game masters

#123

Post by solumos »

Aeolun wrote: post #120

I find it incredibly hard to imagine why anyone would pay for this. Is it really so hard to find one person in a group of players that wants to GM? Is it really that hard to find a group of players in the first place? Meetup has always been perfectly adequate to find a group, and I have to do that only once for every place I live.

It's certainly hard to find one person in a group of players who can be a _good_ GM.

Regardless, I think the key difference here isn't just connecting D&D players, it's more that the GMs are professionals. It's the difference between a professional "murder mystery" dinner, and one that a friend organizes. Sure, the format is largely similar, but the experience is wildly different.

Re: Launch HN: StartPlaying.Games (YC W20) – Tabletop RPGs run by pro game masters

#126

Post by cable2600 »

lethologica wrote: post #125

Ha, I had this idea a while ago and even bought a great domain but never got around to building it. Glad it exists though!

Ditto, my D&D and Traveller groups broke up because we all moved away for jobs or college or military or got married, etc.

There was a program called GRiP that did some of that but was hard to configure. https://wiki.travellerrpg.com/GRiP the company that did it went out of business. So have a good business plan and marketing.

Re: Launch HN: StartPlaying.Games (YC W20) – Tabletop RPGs run by pro game masters

#128

Post by Aeolun »

solumos wrote: post #123
Aeolun wrote: post #120

I find it incredibly hard to imagine why anyone would pay for this. Is it really so hard to find one person in a group of players that wants to GM? Is it really that hard to find a group of players in the first place? Meetup has always been perfectly adequate to find a group, and I have to do that only once for every place I live.

It's certainly hard to find one person in a group of players who can be a _good_ GM. Regardless, I think the key difference here isn't just connecting D&D players, it's more that the GMs are professionals. It's the difference between a professional "murder mystery" dinner, and one that a friend organizes. Sure, the format is largely similar, but the experience is wildly different.

If everyone can sign up to the site and sell their campaigns than the only thing different from Roll20 is that you pay for it?

I would find it hard to call the GMs professionals.

Re: Launch HN: StartPlaying.Games (YC W20) – Tabletop RPGs run by pro game masters

#129

Post by blakewatson »

dataminded wrote: post #102
kntucker wrote: post #2

Hi all! We're Nate, Devon, and Jared, the founders of StartPlaying.Games. StartPlaying.Games is a platform that helps players find tabletop role-playing games (TTRPGs) and professional Game Masters. I (Devon) have been a professional Game Master for over five years, running games for players all across the country. I even started hiring other professional GMs because I had more groups than I could run! The biggest is…

Hey! I've been a user on the site for about two weeks. I'm hopeful that you'll succeed. Currently my group maintains a discord community that helps us find players and connect with vetted DMs. Can you please un-SPA your site? It's really hard to use and the current use pattern is to find a DM and move the discussion off your site as quickly as possible. - The infinite scroll feature makes it really hard and slow to f…

I came here to say the same thing. :) I also wish I could see the hourly rate in the search results or at least in the profile (it seems like you have to click "Book..." currently).

Re: Launch HN: StartPlaying.Games (YC W20) – Tabletop RPGs run by pro game masters

#130

Post by bradknowles »

Needs FFG SWRPG as an option. Saga edition and D6 are both totally different games.

Can this integrate with other tools in the community, like RPGSessions.com? What about mysheets.com? Or myRPGTools.com? What about OggDude’s character builder? What about the various dice rolling programs?

Can you also handle FFG Genesys, which is very similar to FFG SWRPG?

What about virtual tabletop games?

Do you handle audio chat, background music, and video as well? What about shared maps, like roll20?

I’m already in a number of different Discord servers for various different SWRPG campaigns, and while the games themselves don’t cost me any money, Discord certainly does. And if I want the Discord server to perform reasonably well, then I have to get yet another Nitro subscription, and that kinda gets old after the first half dozen or more Discord servers.

And scheduling is a hard problem that I have yet to see anyone handle right.

Speaking only for myself, I’m not looking for a 24x7x365 convention. I want to play with the same group of people every week (more or less). It could be a really large group, so maybe only a small subset of us can get together for any one game. But still the same group of people, albeit perhaps with a few different options for GMs.

Give me a reason to use your community system instead of the various Discord servers I’m on, please. Not only will I be happy to give you money to do so, I’m willing to give you extra money if you can make that experience even better for me.

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